After the Games updated
by mosiesama
Summary: Katniss after coming home. Everthorne.


_The field is like a painting, warm and full of promise. I've never seen somewhere so filled with sunshine, even our field had always had the haze from District 12 hanging. Peeta and a son walking in the tall grass yellow sunlight making their blond hair shine gold. My hair is loose on my shoulders, a fat blond baby in my arms. I whisper secrets as she coos and Peeta, my Boy with the Bread, lifting our son onto his shoulders, strides through the grass to us. Sunshine flickers hot, fire starts throwing yellows and oranges at us and all the warmth turns scorching, crackling and creeping closer. The baby in my arms is suddenly Prim, the toddler I loved all those years ago. And she is melting, the heat crisping her edges. Her face dissolves into the flotsam and jetsam of a dream, smoke and ash on my tongue, and I try to hold on, to hold her tighter, and to call out._

"Prim!" I was still alone in my victor's tomb, the walking dead treading the halls that once held _her_ laugh and _her_ small strength. Mother didn't come home after the war, choosing to stay where her hands were needed and where she could stay busy. I can't blame her.

Turns out us Everdeen woman don't handle loss well, and without Prim I was as much a husk as my mother was when we lost dad. I can move about, and open the cans of food left on my steps once a week, although I never can tell if it's Haymitch or Effie, or maybe Greasy Sae. Effie comes over and fusses with my hair about once a week, washing and brushing, talking all the while. She still fashions herself in Capital attire, although now she sews them herself from the best bits she can find in the Seam. She's getting pretty good, and I'm pretty sure that the uneven ruffle was "in", so I didn't mention it. Seems the two are shacking up. Gag. The thought of them together is unsettling, but she must be good for him. Haymitch is mostly sober when he comes and lights my fire in the evenings. He rarely talks to me anymore, which is a true gift. He pats my shoulder as he enters and leaves, but since he broke the lamp in the hall, screaming that the war was over, I could come home, and I just sat there, he doesn't try to talk to me anymore.

I'm glad, it's so hard to try to concentrate on their words. Effie's optimistic ramblings. I can bathe, eat, walk up the stairs and lay in my bed. Functioning. That's my world. I don't need for more, because more brings pain and hurt and an empty place that can't ever get filled up again. It welcomes in mutts with Coin's and Snow's faces, sharp teeth snapping as I run just a step ahead, their breath heavy with the hunt and anticipation of my blood. It brings Prim, tall with little braided girls clutching her skirts, all looking at me as they smile and wave, only to be swallowed by a falling light that wakes me screaming. And always, a hole, a half missing.

I tried to be better when Peeta was here. He tried to be himself, he tried to remember. But when he asked if he had loved me before the games, true or false, I couldn't answer him. I was getting more unsure of everything from after I volunteered every day. _Had_ he loved me before the Games? Was he even going to eat the night lock? Or would I have been dead and he the winner? What about after? My doubts were unfounded, but they were there. If I could ignore that then why couldn't I forgive myself for failing him? Why couldn't I just love him now that he needed me to?

He was still programed, high jacked, brainwashed. My reassurances weren't any more real than the Capital's nightmares. While he was trying not to kill me at the slightest trigger, I was trying to be someone that didn't exist anymore. I wasn't strong or brave. I was broken. And he wasn't up to fixing us both. We realized this as we looked into each other's eyes, while he held me under the water with bubbles slowly escaping. I didn't even struggle. One moment I was in the tub with my hair canopied over me as he washed my back, and the next his hands had wrapped around my neck and I was laying looking up out of the water at him. I don't know if it was my eyes or his own reflecting back at him that stopped him, but he pulled me up out of the water and held me coughing and shaking to him until the water was cold and I was just shaking. Then he pulled me up roughly by my elbows and wrapped me in a towel, sat me on our bed in the next room and walked down the steps and out of the house. He didn't come back that night. He didn't come back at all.

Effie mentioned the next week he was in District 11, building a bakery, doing well. Said he could feel like himself again without me, and knew what was real. Said he was sleeping through the night. I was too, and the day, and the next night. The sleeping wasn't the problem. But I was seeing him in my dreams, his arms rippling as he kneaded the bread, laughing as he wiped flour from the face of some blonde. Her sweet laughter, turning into screams as she turns around and is Prim, and the loaves are bones in her arms. No, sleep came easy, it was staying asleep and not dreaming that was the problem.

When the snow starts I hear boots on the porch and assume that Haymitch has come to stoke the fire before it gets too dark and the snow gets thick on the ground. I don't turn my head away from the dying embers when the door opens, or when the steps come closer. Stopping behind me a bag drops with a thud. No one moves to add to the wood pile, no one tries to stir the fire back to a roaring life. A tall figure drops next to me and the rocker stops as a heavy hand is rested on the arm. As I turn my head I hold my breath. I know it isn't Peeta's blue eyes that I want to see, but gray, and here they are, with furrowed brows and a set jaw looking at me searchingly.

Gale reaches out with his right hand, and pushes my braid from my shoulder. His thumb traces my jaw as he cups my face in his hand. He smells like everything good and clean and fresh I had forgotten existed.

"Hiya Catnip," he tries a smile, but it seems faded and sad.

I find myself in his arms before I can register if I had flown there or if he had simply picked me up. I'm crying all the tears I had forgotten to cry, crying out the hate and pain that had kept me inert. I don't lash out, not this time, I don't say things I don't mean. He wasn't responsible for Prim, and he's lost a sister just as much as I have. We had been everything to each other. Only the need to provide for _our_ families had kept him from volunteering in the games, like he knew I was prepared to do for him. Everything else he had stood by me, always by my side. It was a miracle I hadn't lost him in that bomb, that he had been pulled away. He'd stayed away so long because of that goodbye I had thrown at him. He had heard finality. I had meant it too. But not now.

Slowly I realize that I'm holding him just as tightly as he's holding me, and Gale is sobbing quietly, whispering, "I'm so sorry, Catnip. God, I'm so sorry." His face is buried in my hair and I pull away just enough to reach up and wipe away his tears.

"Look at us, we're a mess." I start to hiccup as I attempt a laugh. My voice is rough in my throat, unused for so long. I realize a weight has finally fallen off me. This empty hole wasn't empty with him here. I could feel my open wound mending in my chest as I crash into him again and sigh.

That night he stays with me, and we talk about Peeta leaving. He clinched his fists and looked like he was going to walk to Peeta's bakery all the way in 11 and bake him in his own oven when I recount the bath. I blush, realizing how bad it looks with Peeta and me then. I reach out for his hand.

"I care for Peeta, and I'll always remember the bread that he gave me in the rain. I felt like that I owed him, and when we were in the games and Haymitch told me it was our only chance to change the outcome, I played along. I would have pretended to love the whole lot of them if we could have come home and not killed each other. I would have rather had one big God damned orgy then what I had to do and see."

Gale burst out laughing and I did too. We laugh long and hard, and I rest my cheek against his should and loosen his one remaining fist to entwine my fingers.

"I just always felt if I could at least keep Peeta alive, then we were fine. We kept each other alive. That's what we did."

"No, it's what _we_ did Catnip," he squeezed my fingers. "For years before the games, we kept each other alive and safe. I watched you know. I saw what kind of team you two made, and he may have cared about you, but he couldn't protect you, not really. He threw you bread in the rain once, we spent all our lives out in that forest, risking our lives for each other every day."

"I know. I knew it wasn't right, but to wish you were with me, that was me wishing for one of us to die! I couldn't have you die Gale!" I couldn't keep from clutching at his fingers.

"But to feel obligated to love him, my god Catnip, that's sick. I kept your family alive, do you live me out of obligation?"

"No! I love you because you know me better then I know myself, and still put up with me! And I believe it was a partnership mister! I'm still a better archer then you on my worst day," I playfully push him with my shoulder, and he puts his arm around me and pulls me closer.

"Maybe before, but how long has it been since you had a bow in your hands?"

"People get uncomfortable with the President killer having a bow…" I trailed off. My humor had never been the best, Gale and Prim had been the only ones that had gotten me, and here he was looking at me like he didn't know how to respond. Finally he smiles and pushes me back slightly.

"Yea, I could see that… Maybe no more politics for you."

"Is that what you've been doing, playing politics?" The smile fades from his face and he lowers his face to look at our entwined fingers. "Yea, well, maybe no more politics for me either."

After Prim, Katniss looked at me and I knew she was done. With me, with whatever had been this thing between us. I knew how she felt about Peeta, I saw how she kissed him in the Quell. She'd never kissed me like that, her kisses had always been a sisterly type of kiss. But there were times I could feel something else, when I had been pulled towards her by this look in her eyes, when I knew that she was feeling the same thing I was.

I'd never doubted that I loved her. She was just as much a part of me as waking up and breathing. From that moment as kids when I'd found her looking at my traps and I'd accused her of theft, I'd known this girl was special. I tried to spend every second I could with her, and if I'd known that Prim was going to be selected, I'd have forced her to leave with me that day of the Reaping. I would have carried her and Prim bodily into the forest. My biggest regret was not volunteering when Peeta was called. I would have died for her, and maybe she would have looked at me with those desperate eyes, like she couldn't live without me. Instead she looked at me with nothing, and there was nothing left for me at that moment.

So I walked away. Because with Katniss Everdeen, the best way to love her sometimes, was by not being with her.

I worked hard in District 2 and ended up a Major, but the people from Two were so different than almost anyone else I had met. Everyone I had met in Thirteen and with the rebellion had this shared experience of being wronged by the Capital, but Two was used to being, well just that, number two. Second best, almost like the Capital, but not quite. They called themselves the burbs, although I didn't understand the antiquated phrase.

These people had _liked_ living under the Capital's thumb. They had the left overs. They were the Careers. So they viewed the rebels and new government with contempt and suspicion.

I had one under me, Lieutenant Lichter, had dreamed of being a peacekeeper so he could flay kids like me. Every time I saw him the scars on my back would creep and ache. Found him trapping some poor girl in an alley, one hand up her skirt and the other over her mouth. I hit his front tooth out right then and there while that girl tore into the night, her yellow curls flying behind her. For a moment it had been Prim's crying eyes over his hand, and I lost control. I kicked him more times than I could count, and had to be dragged away.

They put me behind a desk after that. Filing paperwork back in Thirteen, were I could be controlled. I was doing it without thinking, for weeks. I'd follow my schedule, and take my meals in the cafeteria, but I wasn't thinking about anything anymore. I was submitting reports about the economic growth and diversity of each district, sorting through business licenses issued, when I came across Peeta's bakery. It wasn't in Twelve. I just stared at it for what must have been the better part of a day, and by the time I left work that night I had submitted my termination request and was making plans to come back home. I didn't belong in the underground of Thirteen, or anywhere else but there.

Mom and the kids had moved back to the Seam, had begged me to come home, but they never mentioned Peeta had left. I knew he had been there with Katniss, with his far away looks and uneasy smile. I knew what living together meant, I wasn't stupid. Or naïve.

But if he was gone, then she was alone. Her mother had been in Thirteen, I had seen her just the week before in the medical ward as I was seeing my forced weekly shrink appointment. I could just see her in that big house, alone, refusing to leave because where would she go? It was like I had a direct feed into her frame of mind.

I was back within days, and walked immediately to the Victor's Village. But as I approached, my steps slowed, and saw her door open. The shadow of the girl I loved appeared on the porch, hair loose in its braid, wearing her night shirt and boots with no laces. She blindly picked out cans from the box of food someone had left. She didn't see me, just grabbed a can indiscriminately in each hand and turned back into the dark house. I quietly approached the window by the fireplace, and could see her in the kitchen, open can in one hand with a spoon, cat staring up at her from the counter, tail twitching in anticipation. She tired of whatever was in the can she just put it in the sink, spoon and all, where that ragged cat jumped in to eagerly lap it up, face wedged as deep as he could get.

I watched her stand with her head bowed, hands gripping the counter as she just stood in the kitchen, and the sun dipping and the shadows stretching out. She slowly stretched and walked towards the window I was staring in, her empty eyes had looked right at me, and my heart stopped. But she didn't see anything, and just went to the rocker and sat staring at the smoldering fire giving off the only dim light in the house. I must have been watching her all afternoon, but she hadn't seen or felt me near. She was like the walking dead, moving about and eating because she had to. But without anyone to take care of, she didn't even bother taking care of herself.

Snow started to fall and brought me out of my voyeuristic foray. I needed to look in her eyes to know what to do. Any reaction would be better than this Katniss doll and her empty face.

I walked deliberately on the stairs, so I would be heard. I didn't knock, and knew the door would be open. When I walked in I didn't bother to call out her name, just advanced towards the back of the rocker like a condemned man to the gallows. This could be the final nail in my coffin. I still needed her like air, and if I was rejected again here, I imagined myself fading into the forest into some cave like a hermit.

But when I reached out and stopped her rocking, and crouched down to look at her, she didn't grow angry or look stricken to see me. She didn't flinch away or scream. And she didn't passively look away and dismiss me.

I see hope flicker, and I can't stop myself from reaching out and pushing back her disheveled hair. I cupped her face and felt her lean into me.

"Hiya Catnip," I try to smile with my old ease, but it doesn't have a chance to fully blossom before she's up and in my arms, holding on so tight it's like she had been drowning and could finally breathe. I want to comfort her, and tell her it'll be alright, but the words get stuck and what comes out are the words I cry out when the nightmares wake me, when I hear both Katniss and Prim's screams ringing out in my empty room. "I'm so sorry, Catnip. God, I'm so sorry."

I don't know how long we're there, but I hold her like I'm afraid she'll disappear.

"Look at us, we're a mess." She pulled back and looked up at me with big tears still clinging to her lashes. But her eyes shine and laugh, and I just pull her to my chest and sigh in relief.

Gale told me about finding Lieutenant Lichter in the alley, how he just reacted and overflowed. I understood. I had felt like that at first when Peeta was here.

I remembered sitting in the door way together with our arms wrapped around out knees, the door open and the rain pattering as we settled into a comfortable quiet. I have a smile on my lips because there is no fight, no war, and we are here together. I'm seeing his face as he tossed me the bread all those years ago, and I close my eyes on Peeta's soft smile with the memory. When I open them he has a hard frown and his brows are drown down in confusion.

"It was raining when I burned the bread, real or not real?" He'd turned his head out to the rain and I could just trace the line of his clinched jaw from the side.

"Real. You have always been kind Peeta." I could never convey to him how important that moment had been to me.

"Kind got most people around you killed," he'd snapped, and the face that whipped around to me wasn't kind anymore. I had felt like he slapped me.

I had pushed him away as I ran down the steps and out into the fields only stopping at the hole in the chain link fence that used to be my very own sanctuary. But I didn't slip beneath. I gripped the chain links harder and calmed my breathing. Peeta was right, anyone kind had gotten killed, and all the others had gotten harder, like Gale.

The thought of going into our woods without Gale drew me up short. Had he gotten harder, or had he been trying to make the world better with the smallest amount of damage? I was confused in that moment and somehow, I understood why he had designed that bomb, and knew he hadn't known how it was going to be used, that he wouldn't have condoned such a cold move to end the war. And wasn't I willing to do the hard things too? Hadn't I taken Coin's life as judge, jury, and executioner simply because I was trying to limit the damage that she was going to commit?

When I turned around from the fence Peeta had been there. He hadn't said anything, just held out his hand and we'd walked back to the house in silence. But I forgave Gale then and there in my heart, and more and more Peeta had to ask what was real, and what wasn't.

I wake up that night to a dead fire with my legs tucked under me and Gale's head in my lap. I grip his hair with my fingers as I jolt awake, and its softness immediately calms me. He mutters in his sleep and wraps his arm around my waist. The light from a half moon is peeking in from the suddenly clear sky, streaming in from between the curtains, and falling on his sleeping face. I run my fingers through his hair brushing it off of his forehead, running them behind his ear. He looks so much like the boy he had been before the Reaping, my heart spills over remembering the life I had imagined then.

I had thought that I would marry Gale, or at least my life full with him, and although I had never wanted children, I had always seen our house filled with Prim, Rory, Vick and Posy. To me they were eternally children, and when they were grown we would have their children. There would always be us and them and we would have had each other.

Then with the Games and having to lie to the whole country, I had given that up. I had thrown away any hope that it could happen, and even though I couldn't have him, I wasn't going to give Gale up completely. He was still my best friend, and the Capital thought he was my cousin. At least I could still have him close, even if I had to watch him with someone else someday. At least he would be safe and we could steal time together. At least in the forest he could still be mine and I could pretend that everything was like before. But now…

I'm realizing for the first time that we may have a chance. This may be the first time there was no one else deciding our futures, no Capital or Rebellion, no Reaping or Games. And no Peeta. He had left. He had his own life and was willing to walk away and leave me. And I knew why. I knew that those mean words and especially that moment in the tub were put there by Snow, that it was like a ghost rising up and consuming the foundation we were piecing together. But Peeta was the one that was broken in his head, and if the confusion was because of me, then better to remove the trigger.

I'm grateful to him. I would have never left him, I was so used to making sacrifices that being greedy was against my nature. But he had made the choice for me, and with Gale returning, there might finally be a chance to be together.

"What are you fretting about Catnip?" He pulls me tighter and opens one eye to look up at me.

"Nothing," I blush. I can't believe I'm thinking these things when really nothing has happened between us. Any kiss we had shared could be attributed to the extreme situation. I knew he cared, like what he told me in that cabin. And I had had no good answer to give. Or that time in the basement, when he had told Peeta that I would choose the one I couldn't live without. I had always been able to convince myself that what Gale felt for me was just deep devotion, and could be chalked up to a brother/sister relationship. That I couldn't live without either one, but that was a lie. I could feel myself coming to life again with him here, and knew my answer.

"Well, as much as I'm enjoying myself, perhaps we should get you into an actual bed?"

Gale rolls off me and onto his feet. He turns the coals over and we climb the stairs. My skin tingles where it can feel his heat. His breath hits my neck as he follows me, just one step behind me, and when we reach the hall my hand lingers on my door frame as I turn to face him.

"You can stay in mom's room across from me here..." I trail off as he steps so close that I have to tilt my head up to look into his face. He doesn't touch me, but my body can feel the pressure of him pushed up against me, and my breath catches.

"I was thinking a little closer then across the hall," he whispers and I can hear him hold his breath waiting for me to answer. I smile, and it comes so naturally even though it is so unfamiliar. I reach out for his hand and pull him into my room and we stand there with both hands clasped for a long moment before I can say anything. But he beats me to it.

"Catnip, I…"

"I know. Me too."

So little has ever been needed to be said between us. We could communicate a whole strategy in a look, so there was so much more that we can read this close to each other. My feet are pushing me up to meet his lips even as he bends down to kiss me.

My arms trail up his arms as his hands release mine, and I feel them wrap around my waist, pulling me so close that I can feel his heart racing against my chest, while mine is trying to match his pace. I can feel his lips part mine and I gasp as his tongue touches mine. I respond eagerly and feel like he is drinking me in, and I want to pour all of myself into him. His hands steal under my nightshirt from the night before and I'm suddenly aware that I haven't showed that day, or the day before. I can't even remember brushing my teeth in weeks, and I'm horrified that I'm kissing him while I'm this disgusting.

I pull back suddenly and I whip my right arm up and over my putrid mouth. He looks at me with this wounded expression and I start trying to explain while I panic.

"I'm disgusting Gale. I haven't showered or brushed my teeth in days! We can't do this now, I have to clean up, my God, I must be repulsive!"

"Come on Catnip, you can't think I'm at my best. I just got off a two day train trip and this wasn't that luxury Victor tour hover train you got used to, this was economy, with old rails and little kids kicking your seat every time you start to dose, let alone nowhere to brush your teeth."

"Well, I don't want to be so, bleh, when we, you know, for the first time."

Gale smiles and grabs me again laughing.

"Do what, pray tell?"

"Gale don't make me say it! How about I clean up first..." I start to creep off towards my bathroom as he holds tight to my hand.

"How about I join you?"

"What?" The thought of him and me naked, in the same room, makes me a little weak. We're suddenly standing at the threshold of my luxury bathroom. The claw tub where Peeta had washed my back each night is just next to me and I glance at it with a little panic seeping up.

"Well, maybe not a bath, but a shower?" He grabs the bottom of his shirt and lifts it over his head, my eyes trailing it's path and by the time his goofy smile reemerges with his tussled hair I'm game.

I wake up with Katniss' hair loose and wrapped around me, feeling like it is trying to devour me and strangle me all at one. Once I convince myself it isn't spider webs, I smell her lavender shampoo and it takes me back to the shower last night. I can see the shape of her under the sheet as she lays next to me. I pull the sheet away and trace the length of her as she sleeps on her stomach. She is soft under my finger tips and I feel like fire ignites everywhere I touch her. I reach up and pull all her hair off of me and lay it on her pillow trying to contain it.

Last night she had stepped away from me when I took off my shirt, and I was ready for her to flee and let me take a shower alone but instead she had reached up and released her hair from its remaining braid. As it had flowed around her she had unbuttoned her nightshirt and was starting to pull it down when I reached out and stopped her.

"Katniss, are you sure?"

She looked up and shook off the shirt in one motion, standing bare in front of me with her hair not even really covering her. I looked at her, drinking her in as she reached back and started the water, a small smile playing on her lips as she looked me up and down.

"Come on Hawthorne, gotta catch up if you want to get in here when this water heats up."

We were in the shower until the water was cold, and then warmed back up in the bed. My hands touched her and I had to keep running them over her again and again afraid that she would disappear from under me like she had done so many nights before.

But she was there, and as the water washed over us like a curtain she touched my chest and pulled hard on my hips. I moaned and buried my head in her hair biting her neck. She was soft and unsure so I reached down and held her hand in mine as I showed her how to explore, and after a moment I pulled my hand away and ran it up between her thighs and buried my palm against her as she gasped. She bent back and I bent down to catch her nipple in my mouth and she pulled one hand up and locked it behind my head, securing me to her as I inserted one then two fingers. I lost myself in her body and soon she was shaking from her orgasms as much as from the cold water.

I turned off the water and we took turns toweling each other dry. Then we fell into her bed, still damp, with the sheets clinging to us. I couldn't stop kissing her then, but her hands kept roaming and soon I was interested in taking this a step further. I rolled on top of her and pushed her legs apart as I settled myself as gently as I could over her, pressed up against her burning lips. She pushed up and soon I felt myself entering her and could feel her stiffing. I stopped, and an impossibility entered my mind.

"Katniss, is this your first time?"

She opened one eye and her nails retracted from my skin a bit.

"Of course, why wouldn't it be?"

I pulled away and could feel her clinging tighter to try to keep me there, but she was so much weaker then she had been, and I easily found myself sitting next to her with the sheet tented over my lap. She pulled the rest up over her bosom and sat up with realization dawning. I grimaced knowing what is coming.

"You thought me and Peeta had…!"

"Of course I did Katniss! Why would I think you didn't? I know you slept together on occasion, and with him living here I naturally thought… What did you two _do_ when you slept together if you never had sex?"

"We slept! And he held my hand. At the end, before he left he would lay here next to me over the blankets, and would kiss me before we went to sleep, but we never did anything more."

"Of course Prince Peeta didn't lay a hand on you. How gallant." I couldn't keep the jealousy from dripping out of my voice and I expected her to get angry and push me out, but instead she started to laugh. She laughed so hard that she had to pull up her knees and wipe her tears on the blankets.

"What?"

"Are you really angry that we never, you know, _did_ it? Come on Gale, I think there may be some perspective you're missing here." Then she pulled off the blanket and laid down pulling me back on top of her and I realized my anger was just an excuse to hide my sudden fear. I hadn't expected to be her first, had assumed I was being compared to Peeta the whole time. Instead she was telling me that she's never done this with anyone else. I didn't want to rush this. I didn't want to risk losing her when she woke up the next morning regretting what we did.

When I did get over my doubts I melted into her and she held me so tight I felt her imprint on my body like she already was on my soul. I pushed into her and it was like we were made for each other. We matched the beating of our hearts and soon we were rushing to get more of each other, of being deeper as I feel further into her.

"I love you Katniss Everdeen, I always have." I whispered and she opened her eyes and reached up to my face. I grabbed her hand and kissed her palm.

"I'm yours Gale Hawthorne. You have me, and I have you. That's all I ever wanted." I kissed her deep, and fell asleep in her arms like I would every night after.


End file.
